How Bernie Won: Inside the Revolution That's Taking Back Our Country--and Where We Go from Here by Jeff Weaver

Author:Jeff Weaver [Weaver, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781250144751
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2018-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

12

THE GRANITE STATE REVOLUTION

GIVEN OUR STRONG SHOWING in Iowa, we wanted a rally for Bernie when he got to New Hampshire—at 4:00 a.m. Ever the miracle worker, Julia Barnes pulled it off.

Most of us on the plane from Iowa, including Bernie, got very little sleep. We were all running on fumes. Julia and her team had set up a rally in a parking lot across the street from the hotel where we were staying. Sure enough, there was a crowd of people holding Bernie signs. It was a very cold February New England night. Bernie climbed onto the back of a pickup truck. A noticeably tired Julia handed him the mic. Bernie gave a short speech and the crowd went crazy. It was a great visual that really captured the excitement that our people were feeling after Iowa. And it was a testament to the strength of our New Hampshire operation that they could pull it off with such little notice.

I spent relatively little time in New Hampshire prior to the last week before the primary. In part that was because there was a sense that we had a good understanding of New Hampshire generally because of its proximity to Vermont. In addition, the polling there had been considerably more positive for us than in any other early state. Bernie, on the other hand, spent a lot of time there, and with great results.

Given how well we were doing in New Hampshire, the campaign staff began to discuss whether it would be possible for Bernie to campaign in New Hampshire for a couple of days right after the Iowa caucus, then visit Nevada and/or South Carolina for two days before returning to finish out the weekend and the following Monday back in New Hampshire before primary day. We never got to try that, because suddenly the set-in-stone Democratic debate schedule was not so set-in-stone after all. Realizing that they had huge ground to make up in New Hampshire before the first vote was cast in Iowa, the Clinton campaign called for another debate in New Hampshire during the week between the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. The Clinton campaign was no doubt looking to repeat the events of 2008, when Hillary Clinton used the debate right before the New Hampshire primary to erase the lead that Barack Obama had built up there.

We weren’t all that enthusiastic about the idea. First, we thought that Bernie might be able to do some extra campaigning outside of New Hampshire, and that it wouldn’t be possible if debate prep had to take place. Second, debates are freewheeling environments, and we needed to win in New Hampshire. What benefit was there compared to the risk? Which leads to the third concern—the principle of the thing. When Bernie and Martin O’Malley had called for more debates the summer before the Clinton campaign, the DNC had stuck to the cramped debate schedule they had previously concocted. Why give Hillary Clinton a chance to make up

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